Political Ideas Position Paper Assignment
Due date: Monday,
December 8. (I will be happy to give
feedback on rough drafts I receive on or before December 1.)
Basic assignment: Write a 7-10 page paper (typed, double-spaced,
one-inch margins, normal type size) explaining and defending your own political
position or perspective or philosophy as it applies to the current situation.
What sorts of changes (if any) would you want to make in the political
policies, principles, and/or institutions of the U.S. of A. And (very important!) why?
Some guidelines:
1. This is not a research paper.
You do not need to read anything but the assigned class readings.
2. I am asking you to express your own
personal opinion (something you may have been taught to regard as too
subjective or as inappropriate for academic work). But I am also asking you to subject your opinion to a careful,
critical examination before you express it.
You may find that your opinion changes in the course of this
examination. In particular, I want you
to examine carefully the arguments and reasons offered by those whose opinions
are opposed to your own, and to show in your paper that you have given those
reasons and arguments a fair hearing.
(See also #5 below.)
3. Be
sure to present reasons in support of your position, not just a list of
policies or principles you support. Try to find reasons that
will have some chance of persuading those who disagree with you. (In other words, avoid "preaching to
the choir", i.e., giving reasons that will only seem like good reasons to
those who already agree with you.) This
is hard. Do the best you can.
4. Be as specific as you can, given the limited space
available. (If you think government is
too big, then specify what sort of programs or activities you would like to
reduce. If you think that every citizen
should have access to health care, then say how this access should be provided
and paid for.) Focus on the issues or
topics that are most important to you.
(At the same time, don’t neglect to explain the basic principles or
values that lead you to approach those issues in the way that you do.)
5. Devote a significant portion of your paper to considering and
responding to political perspectives opposed to your own. For example, if you are a modern
‘welfare-state’ liberal, then imagine that a draft of your paper has been read
by a conservative, a libertarian (classical liberal) and a socialist (or social
democrat). What concerns would these perspectives have about what you are
saying? What objections would they be
likely to raise? How can you respond to
their concerns and objections? Further:
how would you address the concerns of the various liberation movements we have
(or will have) studied?
6. I will be evaluating your paper primarily by
assessing how clearly you state your position and the reasoning behind
it; how alert you are to the variety of possible alternatives and objections to
your position that might come from other political perspectives; how accurately
you have explained the arguments of those who disagree with you; and how cogent
and thorough your replies to those arguments are. I will not be judging your paper on the basis of my opinion
about the correctness of your position.